There have been a few coaching discussions lately and the term ‘coaching’ and ‘training’ are sometimes used interchangeably. The terms may seem similar but have a fine distinction between them.
From a personal perspective, I have been working as an Agile trainer and I am also getting qualified as an ICF credentialed professional coach. This article aims to address the confusion and I hope it can be helpful for people to obtain a better understanding.
Training vs. Coaching
So what is the difference between Coaching and Training? Whilst there is a learning process involved in both concepts and they are complementary to each other, they serve different purposes and adopt different approaches in the delivery process.
Please see below the key differences I have summarised:
Training
Coaching
Trainer transfers knowledge and skills
Coach actively listens and asks powerful questions
A trainer provides external information to the audience
Coach helps coachee to build self-awareness and belief, and removes inner blockers
Learning focused
Development focused
A trainer is an expert
Coach may or may not be the expert
Trainer drives the learning process, the trainer owns the actions
Coach partners with the coachee and facilitates coaching conversations, coachee owns the actions
Usually structured and follow fixed agenda
Usually unstructured and follow the coachee’s agenda
Typically done in a group setting
Typically conducted on a one-on-one basis
Short-term timespan
Mid-term to a long-term process
Be Trained to Become an Effective Coach
Coaching is about partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process which inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. It is a refined methodology that enables maximum effectiveness, and a set of skills that can be developed through practice. Some people tend to mix up coaching with problem-solving, but coaching offers far more than merely providing ‘quick fix’ solutions.
Coaches actively listen and ask the right questions to help people improve self-awareness and build capability to transform and achieve the desired outcome. They work in partnership with clients to motivate, challenge and inspire them to maximise their potential and generate innovative and sustainable solutions from within. For the coaches to gain their competencies, they need to develop the skills, experience, character and compassion to positively influence their clients’ development journey. This involves being fully trained on the subject, and a lot of learning and practices.
Make sure you also check my other article on coaching here.
Adopt Coaching Skills to Become an Effective Trainer
Trainers have an abundant understanding of the subject matter and can transfer their knowledge to the audience in a structured and logical manner. Training implies a linear transfer of information, and research conducted by IBM on adult learning suggested that the if the audience is being told of a piece of information, only 70% of them can recall it after 3 weeks and 10% after 3 months. In other words, the effectiveness is limited if training is intended to just pass on pieces of information.
The recall score increased dramatically when the audiences are not only being told but also have experienced the learning. The IBM research revealed that in this case, 85% of audiences can recall the information after 3 weeks and 65% after 3 months. This finding echoes with the ‘Concrete Practice’ from the 4Cs in Training From the Back of the Room (TFBR) while designing your class.
In my practice as an Agile trainer, I found coaching a very useful tool to engage the group and provide the class with a unique journey with a great experience. I have actively asked audiences questions, invited them to think on their feet and resonate with themselves. I introduced Agile concepts and training content, facilitated the class to practice in teams, and delivered impactful and sustainable results.
Make sure you also check my other article on Training here.
Training and Coaching
In summary, training and coaching complement each other in equipping learners and driving them to move ahead to achieve their goals. I use the analogy of training and coaching working together like the way we playing tennis. Training is about the technicalities of developing the skills on how we serve, hit the ball, and move in the court which are extrinsic. Coaching is about the belief, the drive to succeed, and removing the inner barriers which are intrinsic. Despite that training and coaching are distinct practices, they can work well together and deliver successful outcomes. Training transfers the desirable knowledge and skills, coaching instil the learning and enthusiasm from the training to the workplace in a more sustainable way with greater influence.
Living in a time of significant changes: A glance at Leadership Traits
Leadership traits are the personal qualities that help a person to shape himself or herself into an effective leader. These traits help one to address specific challenges and work efficiently in different fields. For example, leaders in IT must deal with the constant industrial change, as well as issues with cybersecurity threats, legacy systems, and legal compliance, etc. Leaders should also model some of the leadership qualities to motivate employees to achieve high performance and meet business goals.
Key Leadership Traits
Throughout my career, I have been working with quite a few leaders, many of them are competent but only a few are extraordinary and influential. What makes the difference? Some people suggest that great leaders should be resilient, responsible, respected, and should have a solid base in domain knowledge. Some people say that outstanding leaders should be kind to their subordinates and demonstrate ethical conduct. Others reckon that a charismatic style of the leaders is more desirable and will draw people to them.
I have summarized the following qualities which I have observed working with leaders, and I believe all leaders should consider embodying them to be effective.
Empathy
When a leader treats all with respects, shows genuine concern for others, listens carefully to understand, it helps the leader to create awareness, earn trust and foster relationship. Leaders who create strong rapport, develop deep bonds between themselves and their employees, help to improve team collaboration and warrant the long-term success of organizations.
Emotional Intelligence
A leaders’ emotional intelligence is as important as professional ability, if not more. It is not only about recognising and managing one’s own emotion, but also understanding the people around you, how they feel and how your emotions affect them. Have you witnessed any emotional outburst in the workplace, and how did that impact the working relationship? Leaders need to master their emotions and navigate through stressful situations to succeed.
Foster ‘No Blame’ Culture
When the team make mistakes or encounter issues, instead of looking for a scapegoat and blaming individuals, leaders should focus on the problem, looking for constructive solutions and moving forward. By fostering a ‘no blame’ culture within an organisation, leaders encourage employees to participate actively, learn and improve constantly, and help the organisation to more transparent and continue to grow.
Humility
Humility is the recognition of people being human and have both strengths and weaknesses. Leaders who show humility, don’t think less of themselves, instead, they think more of the others. They prioritise the success of the organisation over their own. Humble leaders present themselves like everyone else, they attract and inspire followers and bring people together to contribute to their business’ success.
Responsibility
Leaders should take full responsibility for themselves, as well as the success of the project, team, and organization. Responsible leaders stand by their success and take ownership of their mistakes. They take the initiative to do what needs to be done and they will hold others accountable. They are willing to cross the boundaries and help out where needed.
Self-Confidence
Leaders’ confidence is influential. Employees are drawn to leaders who are confident, seeking their opinions and advice. Leaders should also recognize the value of building self-confidence within the others and are not threatened by doing so. This will help to promote new ideas and maximise participation from everyone. Also, self-confidence enables one to be more flexible in adapting others’ suggestions, taking responsibility, and keeping on improving, which is key to today’s businesses.
Courage
Courageous leaders are assertive and willing to take calculated risks. They are willing to try new things, test new ideas, and facilitate constructive disagreements for the best interest of the organisation. These individuals often champion new ideas and breakthroughs and enable the team to achieve creative solutions.
Focus
Extraordinary leaders don’t wait to start, they plan, and are extremely organized. They encourage collaboration and inclusive leadership. Also, they think through multiple scenarios with viable alternatives and plan toward success. They devise strategies, formulate plans, define processes and monitor progress to warrant high performance. They take calculated risks and prepare contingency plans in the event of unexpected changes.
Leadership focus on how leaders use their authority in the decisions they make, actions they engage in, and ways they influence others. Effective leaders exercise a high level of integrity, leading with confidence, communicating clearly and concisely, addressing problems without finger-pointing, demonstrating courage and real accountability, and keeping focused on delivering the business’ objectives. They are people-oriented, aware of how their decisions impact others and use their power to serve the greater good and motivate teams to achieve high-performance.
Also, don’t miss to check our Leadership course curriculum. Contact us at [email protected].
If you want to become a great leader, make sure you embody and demonstrate the qualities discussed above. It isn’t easy, but the rewards can be truly phenomenal. If you want to become a transformational leader and need help to improve your leadership skills, Contact usto find out how we can help.
As an Agile coach for one of the top globally renowned Fortune 100 companies, I had the privilege to work with various clients and assist their Agile transformation. In the journey, I have often been approached by leaders with the question: how we are doing? In this article, I’d like to share a case study and my thoughts on defining and adopting Agile metrics which is a critical part of the Agile transformation. The Agile metrics help to measure not only the velocity, throughput, product quality, team health, etc. but also reveal the value delivered to customers.
Case Study
Background
In 2016, I had the privilege to work as part of a team of 55 Agile Coaches to roll out Agile adoption and transformation across a client’s CIO division which has over 2,500 people. The client’s CIO division is comprised of several domains and subdomains. It has adopted the Spotify organizational model of Squads, Tribes, Chapters and Guilds. Just for your background, the specific structure can be described in the broad sense as follows:
A Squad is a basic unit of a development team;
A Tribe is a collection of Squads working in related areas;
A Chapter is a small family of people with similar skills and competencies in the same Tribe;
A Guild is a community of people with the same interest across the organisation.
A more detailed explanation of the Spotify way of working can be found following the link, should you need more information.
Capturing Agile Metrics
We adopted the Wave Planning model which is a phased planning technique for large and complex projects like this one. The entire 2016 was marked as Wave One. We worked collaboratively with the client, formed the right teams, trained them on Agile principles, values, tools and practices, mentored and coached the teams to adopt the new way of working.
After the teams and workflow have been established, we started working with specific Squads to capture the Agile metrics. We held a few discussions with the teams and collected their thoughts. We understood that the velocity, story points, burn-down/burn-up charts, defect trends, throughput, and cycle time are some of the key metrics that are crucial to them. During the reflection sessions, we reviewed the metrics with the teams and made sure they still serve the purpose of performance measurement for the specific team.
After Wave One has been successfully implemented in January 2017, the leaders were keen to devise the metrics to the other Squads, which I have advised them not to. I had separate discussions with the targeted Squads regarding if measuring velocity and story points help the Squads to get better and if they receive feedback from management on the metrics they have submitted at the end of each sprint. The Squads suggested that it is not the sprint velocity that mattered. Instead, the trend of the sprint velocity and analysis of the variations/deviations would help the team to course correct and get better. A few team members felt that velocity is more of a predictable number, and it is the value delivered to the customer at the end of each sprint that should be measured. Some also suggested that there should also be a measure of the benefits realized for the work done by the team. Therefore, it is advised that the Agile metrics be defined and owned at the individual Squad level and not to be compared with each other.
The Agile Metrics
To sum up, Agile metrics are an important tool to help teams understand how effective they are, and allow teams to continue learning and improving processes. They need to be understood and applied properly to deliver value. Below are some of my advice to help Agile teams establish powerful metrics:
Don’t measure everything for the sake of it.
Management team not to impose the metrics on teams.
Teams to adopt the metrics that matter to them and add value.
Consider using a few metrics together to provide a comprehensive view of the Agile activities.
Make them easy to understand and update.
Maintain metrics regularly (daily or weekly) and be consistent in the way you measure them.
Different units in the organisation may use distinctive metrics, what works for one may not work for the other.
Don’t merely focus on the numbers, interpret the factors that are impacting the team.
Ground the measurement in the agile process, observe trends and understand whether there’s an improvement or fallback.
Make visual charts of the key metrics, and make them visible to the team.
Agile metrics provide stakeholders with the baseline of where the teams are and transparency over their journey. You may consider the measurement from four key aspects: people, customer, financial, and process. Below are examples of some key metrics that have been used by teams we have worked with.
People: Team Satisfaction, Attrition Rate, Skills Gap
Customer: Release Net Promoter Score (NPS), End-User Satisfaction, Escaped Defects
Financial: Unit Cost per Transaction, Total Operational Cost
Process: Agile Velocity, Sprint Burndown, Lead Time, Cycle Time, Throughput, Backlog Size
Are you interested in learning more about Agile transformation best practices? Are you looking for help to understand what types of metrics would be relevant to your teams? Leadership Tribe has been helping organizations of all sizes with their transformation journey and we are here for you.
I am from Wuhan. When foreigners ask me where I am from, not many people recognise the city and I’d be proud to introduce my hometown to them.
Wuhan is regarded as Chicago of China since it’s the central point for transportation. It is the sixth-largest city in the country and one of the most aggressive powers for domestic trade. Despite it is not as famous as Beijing or Shanghai internationally, Wuhan is a well-developed city with wealthy culture and history and a population of over 11 million people.
I had hoped for my city to gain its global fame one day, though I never thought it would be known by the world for the outbreak of coronavirus.
About my experience
I have been working abroad over the last decade, and I rarely had the chance to spend the Chinese New Year with family in China due to work commitment and timing issues. Since I started Leadership Tribe with some like-minded partners, I had some flexibility and decided to spend the 2020 Chinese New Year in Wuhan.
Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, I have been stranded at home for over a month now. And if I look back, the emotional stages I have experienced coincides with the Kubler-Ross Model to a certain degree.
The Kubler-Ross Five Stage Model
Kubler-Ross (1969) described five stages of grief, which was first observed as a human response to learning about terminal illness. The stages represent the common range of feelings people experience when dealing with change in their lives or at work.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
The model has also been widely used to understand how people react to change at different times. The stages can last for different periods, and may replace each other or exist side by side at times. It is important to understand that people need to move through the stages and reach ‘Acceptance’ to drive change.
Denial
When the news about the coronavirus in Wuhan first came out, I was in complete shock and I really couldn’t believe what is happening in my city. I have always witnessed and enjoyed the glamour of urban life in the city, and I never know such a wildlife market existed on ‘the dark side’ of the story. I was defensive and I refused to believe this is happening after the ordeal of SARS, like an ostrich with its head in the sand.
Anger
After a week or so, the reality started to settle in and I felt angry at everything. I was furious at the people who trade and consume wildlife irrespective of the government’s ban, which was believed to be the source of the catastrophe. I was frustrated at the fact that the early warning signals were missed, and we lost the best opportunity to restrict the impact of the coronavirus. I was irritated that the foreign media coverage suggested the wildlife market is popular in China, where most people can’t relate. I felt disserted and abandoned, and I was surprised myself that my anger was directed from different directions.
Bargaining
The bargaining stage is where one attempts to get life back on how it was before through a type of negotiation of making a major change. Looking back, I don’t think I have experienced much in this stage. I never feel desperate as I am at home with my parents, and to me, there is no place safer than home. I might be concerned about many things, but I have always felt safe and I believe it is just a matter of time that life will be back to normality.
Depression
My anger dissipated quickly and after staying in the flat for a few weeks, I realised the reality that with the outbreak of the coronavirus, we have to stay in to keep away from it. I didn’t feel like to do anything, I didn’t want to leave the bed, and I didn’t even want to talk to family and friends. There was a sense of hopelessness and I didn’t care as much about what was going around me. The world seemed overwhelming, and how much I have hoped that I wake up to the news that the whole coronavirus thing is over!
Acceptance
I kept on muddling along, till earlier this week that I became aware of a deadline that I need to work towards. It was a pin drop for me, which helped me to re-enter reality. The world still goes on, I have work, I have deadlines, I have Leadership Tribe to support and I have loved ones who are supporting me. It has been a tough ride, and yes we might still be stranded for not sure how long, but like all the people here in Wuhan who are fighting the same war, we have the faith that we will defeat the disease and create better lives after the catastrophe.
In all, I have experienced the stages in the Kubler-Ross model with the coronavirus outbreak. By reflecting on my emotional journey, I have learnt a bit more about myself and I acknowledge that I am in the ‘Acceptance’ phase.
I am sure the people in Wuhan are going through the same stages, one way or the other, which conveys different levels of emotion as they deal with the changes in their lives. I’d like to recognise and applause the bravery it takes for all the people from Wuhan coming thus far. We can never expect what happens next, all we can do is to move along with the changes, explore new possibilities and look for creative solutions.
I have also summarised my ‘lessons learnt’ from the coronavirus outbreak in another blog. If you are interested, make sure you follow us to get the latest update.
Human language is unique and generative, and enormously powerful to either contribute to people’s enjoyment or make their life miserable. Every day we touch people in different ways, and why not use the power of our language to enrich lives and make yourself feel good?
Nonviolent Communication presents a simple method for clear, empathic communication, and enables you to genuinely connect with others and defuse any potential conflict.
Violent Communication vs Nonviolent Communication
To look at what the nonviolent communication is, let’s first look at what it is not. Dr Rosenberg referred to violent communication as “life-disconnected, life-alienated thinking and language”. This way of thinking and speaking is based on judgement, labelling, humiliation, blame, criticism, coercion and firm notion of who is right/wrong. It pushes people away from connecting.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC), on the other hand, allows people to be conscious, present, and genuine, without implying wrongness on the other party. It helps people to connect at the deeper level of values and needs and build quality connection. NVC enables people to share their perspectives harmoniously and listen behind the statement. As a result, people are more compassionate and less defensive, they communicate better and conflicts are less likely to occur.
The Nonviolent Communication Process
The Nonviolent Communication process consists of four components: Observations, Feelings, Needs, Requests. Each of these four components has two parts, as for any communication model: speaking and listening. NVC refer the two parts as honesty (one’s authentic and genuine self-expression) and empathy (how one listens). We use these in conjunction with our Nonviolent Communication skills to exchange information and make both parties feel more connected and bring about mutually beneficial outcomes.
The four components of the Nonviolent Communication process are introduced below, as well as some practical hints on how we use them:
Observations
Your perceptual observation of the neutral facts provides the basis of the communication, so both parties are clear of what you are talking about.
Practical Hints:
State the factual observations that lead you to initiate the communication, with no judgment or evaluation. This provides a common ground for communication and eliminates confusion. For instance, “It is 10:30 am and I see you just arrive at work” states an observed fact, while “It’s way too late for you to arrive at work” makes an evaluation.
Feelings
Feelings are the physical sensations we experience in our body and emotions in a given interaction. They offer a great opportunity for us to establish a powerful connection with another person, communicate our own experience or understand the other side of the story.
Practical Hints:
Inform the other party about your emotion triggered by the observation, or ask what the other person is feeling without judgment. It helps to identify the feeling that you or the other person are experiencing at that moment and enables you to connect with mutual respect and cooperation. For example, “It is 10:30 am and I see you just arrive at work. I feel my time is not being respected.” Or if you want to ask the other person “The board meeting is in half an hour and I see you are pacing. Are you feeling anxious?”
Needs
Understanding people’s needs bring communication to the core, allowing people to see each other’s humanity. It enables the understanding and healing process and sets the tone for a win-win solution. It is important to point out that in NVC, ‘needs’ differ from ‘desires’ in the sense that they are shared by all people, and not specific to any particular circumstance or strategy for accomplishing them.
Practical Hints:
State the need which cause a particular feeling, or ask the same for the other party without judgement. It provides clarity on what is going on with both parties at the moment, and help to identify the underlying need. For instance, “I haven’t been involved in the team decision, it makes me feel uncomfortable and I need to be heard as part of the team.” Or you can ask the other person “I understand that you were not involved in your team decision. Are you feeling sulking because your voice is not being heard?”
Requests
Expressing what you want by making a concrete request and taking responsibility for it.
Practical Hints:
Ask clearly and explicitly for what you want instead of beating the bushes. It is important to note that you are making a request, not a demand, which means the other person has the choice to reject or offer you something else. For example, “How about we have a weekly all-inclusive team meeting to discuss the decision which impacts our team going forward?”
Remember, in any communication it is never about ‘who is right and who is wrong’, it is always about ‘how can I make life more wonderful’. When people experience quality connection, they will spontaneously feel motivated to create win-win outcomes.
Here at Leadership Tribe, we can help you or your team to incorporate compassionate communication in your interactions with family, friends, co-workers, or anyone else you come into contact with. Contact us at [email protected] to find out the solution that best suits your needs.
